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�During
one excursion, I was walking point (walking first as the group
leader) and was shot,� Parsons said. He received the Combat
Action Ribbon,
the Vietnamese Cross of
Gallantry
and a Purple Heart,
but more importantly he gained a new outlook on life. �Vietnam
was a life-changing experience. I went over there, having no idea
what I was really getting myself in to. I made a promise to myself
that I would work my hardest to make sure that I could be at mail
call the next morning. I never looked beyond that and just took
things one day at a time.�
When
his tour of duty was over, Parsons went back home to Maryland
with an acute understanding that time is a commodity that is too
precious to waste. He used his veteran�s education benefits to
enroll at the University
of Baltimore.
Though his war experience had motivated him to make something of his
life, he still wasn�t sure what he wanted to do. To keep it simple
he decided he would just major in the first subject in the
curriculum book � Accounting.
It turned
out to be a fortuitous choice. Parsons found he had a knack for
numbers and studied his way to a CPA
degree. That opened the door to a job with a direct mail company
where he quickly became one of the top representatives. The
combination of accounting and direct mail experience would end up
playing a key role in the building of Bob�s first business empire.
Personal
computers had begun appearing in stores and Parsons was one of those
who quickly fell under their spell. �I started messing around,
creating different kinds of software. I had the most success
developing a tax/finance program to help my wife organize the
household,� Parsons recalled. �Having the brilliant idea
that I could sell the software from my basement, I started to take
out advertisements in magazines, offering the software for hundreds
of dollars.� Unfortunately, that high end of the market was
crowded with able competitors and Parsons soon found himself almost
broke.
When
he received a tax refund check that he got only because of the
previous year�s loss, Parsons decided to use the money in a last
ditch attempt to market his product in a different way. �I offered
it at a rate so much lower than any of my competitors, I started to
make money!� Indeed I remember getting mail order offers
from Parsons Technology
back in the mid 90�s offering various programs at remarkably low
prices. I bought a few myself and thousands of others did the same.
Before long, Intuit,
the Mountain View,
California software
giant (makers of Quicken)
noticed the success Parsons was having. They came calling with a $64
million
check in hand. Parsons took the money and realized the American
Dream by retiring a couple of decades early at age 45. Parsons told
us, �After
the sale I
moved to Scottsdale,
Arizona
to relax in the sun and learn to play better golf. After months of
playing golf - and not really improving - I decided I enjoyed the
daily aggravation of business more than I enjoyed the daily
aggravation of a par-three hole!�
Within
a year he had enough of his life of leisure. �I still had a strong
interest in computers and computer software,� Parsons said. �I
started tinkering again, but this time, I started tinkering with a
team of people who had worked with me before and knew what was going
on in the industry.� In 1997 he started a new company with no real
business plan. This business would become Go
Daddy
but the original name was Jomax
Technologies.
�The
name came from a road I passed on my drive into work,� Parsons
said. �At Jomax, we did a little bit of everything. I tried to do
education. I tried to do networks. I tried all sorts of things and
none of that really worked. I tried to do website development, and
we were able to turn a small profit, but it wasn�t worth the
amount of work we had to do to earn that profit.� Still Parsons
and company kept throwing things up against the wall and finally
something stuck. �We decided to try a do-it-yourself kind of web
development tool, which we named WebSite
Complete.
That software helped put us on the map and we are on its sixth
incarnation today.�
Though WebSite
Complete kept the company from falling into a deeper hole, it
wasn�t the home run Parsons was looking for. �As the sole owner
and founder, I was able to make due with a small team of developers,
but we soon found ourselves looking for other ways to make money,�
Parsons said. In 1999 he decided to enter the domain registration
business, a decision that completely changed the face of the
industry. Parsons recalled, �We had looked at this industry and
decided it was both over-priced and under-serviced. However, to make
our mark in a field that was being run by monopolies, we had to
offer a proposition that no one else was offering at the time.�
Thinking
like a true domainer, Parsons decided the first thing he had to do
was replace Jomax with a catchier name. �During one brainstorming
session, we started just shouting out names and someone shouted �Go
Daddy!�
- not really as a name but just as encouragement,� Parsons said.
�When we looked in the Whois,
GoDaddy.com was not taken so we registered it and have been Go Daddy
ever since!�
�Now
that we had the name, we needed something that would make us
distinct from the domain name registrars that were already on the
market. Therefore, our �business plan� became low-cost,
high-quality products with 24/7 live customer support - that was
something the other domain registrars could not compete against. We
priced our offering at $8.95 - considerably lower than the hundreds
of dollars people originally had paid when the Internet was new, and
more than 70 percent lower than the prices they were paying in 1999
when we became a domain registrar. Low prices combined with 24/7
customer support - we could not be touched,� Parsons declared.
History
bears him out. Go Daddy has been the world�s #1 registrar of new
domains for three years in a row. They now rank #2 in total domains
and Parsons told us that will change as well. �We anticipate
overtaking Network
Solutions
in most domain names under management by summer of 2006,� he said.
Few people would bet against Parsons hitting that goal. Go Daddy is
profitable and growing rapidly. They will employ 500 people by the
end of this year. Parsons keeps those employees happy with generous
incentive programs and a commitment to keep the company and its jobs
in Arizona rather than follow the current outsourcing trend that is
sending so many call center jobs overseas.
Parsons Keeps Go Daddy on a Fast Track
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| Above:
Parsons at Go Daddy headquarters on one of two Harley
Davidson motorcycles that will be the grand prizes in a
contest for the company's customer service specialists.
Valued at $11,000 per bike, the Harleys (or a comparable
automobile) will be the top reward for employees that work
in the GoDaddy.com 24/7 Customer Support Center.
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Strong
marketing and favorable word-of-mouth helped make Go Daddy an
immediate success but Parsons said a continued drive to develop new
ancillary products and services while continuing a low-cost,
high-quality pricing structure played a critical role. Some
professional domainers, who register hundreds or even thousands of
domains, are annoyed by the product sales screens one has to wade
through en route to registering a domain at Go Daddy, but it is
those product sales that allow the company to remain the low-price
leader.
Based
on their registration numbers, most customers obviously view
navigating through the extra screens as a small price to pay to get
registrations currently less than $5 for some extensions. Especially
since the rock bottom prices are accompanied by a full set of
features. There is complete DNS control and no charge for ownership
transfer, domain locking, email forwarding, URL forwarding and
parking pages with a �For Sale� sign.
�Our
multi-product catalog has also assisted in developing other
companies, which are now part of The Go Daddy Group,� Parsons
said. Those include Wild
West Domains,
a separate registrar offering a complete domain name reseller
program that allows customers to offer Go Daddy products and
services on their own sites. Over 11,000 resellers are in the Wild
West program and the registrar now ranks among the world�s top ten
registrars.
A third ICANN-accredited
registrar, Blue
Razor Domains,
was added to the mix late last year. Parsons said, �Blue Razor is
a membership-based domain name registrar for large volume purchases,
kind of like the Costco of
domain registration. It has proven to be a successful venture as
more and more companies register hundreds of domain names at a
time.�
The
Go Daddy Group also includes Starfield
Technologies,
a company that serves the company�s development needs (with more
than 100 people on 23 different development teams) and also provides
the Group�s Secure
Sockets Layer (SSL) Certificate
Authority. Parsons is applying the low-cost mantra to this service
as well. �As the owner of a trusted root, Starfield
Technologies allows all of our companies to sell validated SSL
certificates that provide onsite security to ecommerce businesses
and their customers for $49.95, $850 less than other providers.�
Another
venture is Domains
by Proxy,
a private domain name registration service with patent-pending
procedures that allow customers to keep their personal information
out of the public database. With these multiple divisions, Go Daddy
plans to keep improving current products and rolling out new ones.
Parsons said �we recently upgraded our hosting and email account
plans and we will be launching an ecommerce storefront building tool
this fall that will make it incredibly easy for a small business to
launch an online commerce site.�
We also offer domain name backordering and secure online storage and
we are expecting to launch approximately 11 new products in Fourth
Quarter of this year.�
Domain
name back ordering refers to Go Daddy�s effort in the drop
catching arena, an area of the business that has become incredibly
competitive in the past year. With SnapNames.com�s
recent move from a fixed price to an auction model, Go Daddy is the
last major drop catching service that will chase a name for a low
fixed price (currently $18.95). However, with only 3 registrars
going up against the dozens now employed by Pool.com,
Enom�s Club Drop, Snapnames
and others, Go Daddy�s success rate on high profile names is low.
Before
the registrar arms race began, Go Daddy had better luck. For example
they caught Native.com
for Sidney Parfait
(who later sold it for
$10,000)
and I caught two 3-letter .nets on the same day with them. Though
times have changed Parsons refuses to get caught up in the registrar
partner one-upmanship currently underway. �When Go Daddy started,
there were 35 registrars on the market, now there are more than 250,"
Parsons said.
That
explosion in active credentials has been accompanied by horrible
experiences with many of the no-name registrars that have
been enlisted to help drop catching firms acquire names. The
lack of basic domain management features, customer support, or even
a functioning website has left many buyers so angry they are simply
walking away from the market. Parsons said �something does need to
change. The current method used by VeriSign
to drop names can continue to work, but needs to be modified to make
it not cost effective to add accreditations for the sole purpose of
capturing names. The WLS
(Verisign�s proposed Wait
List Service)
is not the answer to that, it simply kills ALL
competition.�
Parsons
said �VeriSign is attempting to take over the entire market and
create a monopoly.� Though he has been at the forefront of the WLS
fight he added �we have been and continue to be willing to work
with VeriSign and ICANN in solving the problems that face this
segment of the market, and still keep it open and competitive.�
With
respect to the new ICANN-accredited registrars that routinely ignore
the governing body�s rule book, Parsons added, �ICANN does need
to get some teeth and enforce its agreements. But to be fair, they
have not had the sufficient resources or staff to do it. That�s
why we have so strongly supported the current (increased) budget. It
funds ICANN at a level necessary to pursue the enforcement the
industry is looking for.�
Whatever
happens Parsons insists �Go Daddy remains committed to offering a
backorder program that the average user can understand and be
successful with.� Though the top .com
drops will likely remain out of Go Daddy�s reach unless a new
distribution system is implemented, the company�s service does
have success with less contested drops as well as expiring domains
in the new extensions; .info,
.biz and .us
(they are also the industry�s leading seller of new .us
registrations).
Whenever we
corner an industry leader like Parsons, we try to get their take on
where the industry might be headed in the months and years ahead.
�I think the domain name business will remain healthy for years to
come,� Parsons said. �It used to be that businesses that had a
domain name were considered unique. Now a business that does not
have a domain name is considered incomplete. Businesses can only
look to the registrars to provide them with the �legitimacy�
that comes with having their own domain.�
�We
were once called the �Wal-Mart�
of domain registrars and that is a nickname we keep with pride,�
Parsons said. �However the domain name is just the beginning. Now
customers are looking for a one-stop-shop for all their web
development needs. Companies like Go Daddy that offer hosting,
email, security, spam protection, customized web site development
tools - those are the companies that are going to be around for the
long haul.�
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* * * *
Editor�s
Note: For those who would like to comment on this story,
we invite you to make use of our Letters to the Editor
feature (write to [email protected]).
If you missed our previous Cover Story click
on the headline below:
Inside
a Drop Catcher�s War Room: How eNom Arms Maker Chris Ambler Is
Turning The Tide for Club Drop
All
other previous Cover Stories are available in our Archive
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